Circus
by thequeenwillruletheboard
Summary: She'd never slept, so saying that Kanna woke up that morning would have been an inaccuracy. However, as the sun rose, she could tell the air was different somehow. The light gleamed in her eyes and filled her with dread, surprised that she even had a breath to hold in her uneasiness. She never noticed she could breathe before.
**AN:** This was written for the first week of Feudal Prompts, Day 5: "Last Day" run by Sankontesu on tumblr. It was my first time writing for Kanna, but she's my favorite character so I figure it's about time to give it a go.

* * *

She'd never slept, so saying that Kanna woke up that morning would have been an inaccuracy. However, as the sun rose, she could tell the air was different somehow. The light gleamed in her eyes and filled her with dread, surprised that she even had a breath to hold in her uneasiness. She never noticed she could breathe before.

Gripping her mirror tightly, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, figuring that might undo the tension knotting under her ribcage.

It didn't.

"Kanna," he called behind her. She turned to face him, the morning light that reflected onto the cavern walls from her mirror bathing him in a grotesque red glow. "Come. We have work to do."

She nodded and shuffled along behind him. "Yes, Naraku."

This morning, she noticed he remained silent. Usually, she lost herself in thought to the sound of his droning voice, but today they walked in silence.

Today, he could hear when she whispered, "I wonder what it's like to dream."

He looked back at her over his shoulder, cocking up an eyebrow. "What was that? What did you say?"

In lieu of speaking, of betraying anything else, she merely shook her head and kept pace behind him.

She hoped he would forget.

.

x

.

In the afternoon, after battling her discomfort for hours, she sat on a shaded hillside, watching Naraku's movements in the mirror cradled in her lap.

He approached Kagura, floating down to interrupt her course in his arrogant pink bubble. If she had any blood, it would have drained from her face when he spoke of Kagura's betrayal. Kanna had known of course, being the one that had conveyed the truth to him in the first place.

She watched when by her own doing, he returned Kagura's heart to her body and then poisoned it, sending her feather down toward the ground, miasma rising up in a spiral behind her. Kanna knew without a doubt that Kagura would not survive the wound.

In the mirror, Naraku glided back toward the cave he and Kanna had set up as a temporary home base.

An urge, deeply weighted in the pit of her stomach bid her to follow Kagura, but she walked instead alongside the path Naraku himself took, aware that he would be expecting her when he returned so he could watch Kagura's death himself. Her feet knew their own way, and she focused on the woman in the mirror with purple clouds seeping out into the wind behind her.

Kanna didn't even realize at what point she had stopped walking and stood in front of Naraku; her consciousness had receded to a throbbing irritation behind her eyes, only awake enough to keep her feet moving in the right direction. She snapped back into place when she heard his voice: "Where have you been, Kanna?"

"Outside," she responded. "Watching."

The mirror and its contents caught his attention, and he ignored that he had even asked her a question. He always did – she never lied to him, so he never considered her answers.

She let her eyes droop nearly shut, the same image on the mirror appearing behind her eyelids. A bed of white flowers stretched beneath a cerulean sky, except for the patch stained red beneath Kagura's slumped form. Kanna could hear the beads of her earrings clacking in the wind, and she tried to focus on that instead of the crimson flowers – flowers that shared a shade with Kagura's gasping lips and fading eyes.

Suddenly, out of a world that had only ever been white or black, red was the only color Kanna could see. A burning rage bubbled from the bottom toes into the fingers that clutched the mirror and through the crown of her skull. For the second time in her short, blank life, she became aware of her breath, shallow and rugged, and she struggled to keep her ribcage perfectly still in front of her master – her _murderer_.

Through the scarlet haze clouding her vision, she watched Kagura disintegrate into the wind, and in the split second after she had gone completely, the mirror pulled and tugged for any souls in the area, desperate for vengeance, for atonement. A heavy burden fell onto Kanna's back and she wanted – she _wanted –_ someone to blame, someone to pay: Naraku for killing her, Kanna for giving him the idea, Kagura for betraying him.

And then he _laughed,_ victorious and guttural, and had Naraku possessed a soul she would have stolen it – but the mirror came up empty like someone sucking for water in an empty bowl, and the sudden burst of the Everything that had consumed her drained through the soles of her feet into the craggy cave floor, and she waited to be dismissed, certain he had not caught her lapse into existence.

.

x

.

As the sun set, Kanna stepped onto the blossoming field now drenched with rain. The only remnant of what had occurred was the lone sprawled fan in the spot where her best friend, her sister, her only love had perished.

Gently plucking it from the ground, she stared at it, and spoke the first meaningful words she had ever wished someone could hear: "Kagura, did you become the wind? Did you win your freedom?"

The emptiness of the world around her cushioned her melancholy walk toward a nearby lake where she could lay Kagura's last possession to rest where Naraku could not and would not touch it. The pitter-patter of the rain filled the silence in her wake, but she still wondered how it could be possible for her to speak and the world to fall quiet, rather than the other way around.

At the edge of the water, she cradled the fan to her chest, the rim of her mirror digging into the flesh in her abdomen underneath it.

If the world would not give her the answers she sought, she would not give it any more of her speech. In the whispers of her mind, she made Kagura a promise. _He will die, and so will I. We will all be free._

With a last moment of breath, of comfort, Kanna held the fan over the water and let go. It fell with a light splash, and she stayed to watch it drown the way she could not stay with Kagura.

The red tinge at the edge of her vision faded, her love finally put to rest. She turned away and headed back the way she'd come, reaching the conclusion that rage, spite, and vengeance were hollow and dark, just like her.

.

x

.

Not even a few days later, Kanna walked into Naraku's cave to find a man leaning in Kagura's usual corner, with Kagura's pointy ears, with Kagura's rouge on his lips, and a lotus flower in his palm where her fan would go.

He raised an eyebrow at her, in an all-too familiar way. "Who are you?"

Naraku spoke for her, as he always did. Nothing has no words, or so he believed. "This is your sister, Kanna of the Void. Kanna, this is my newest incarnation, Byakuya of the Dreams." He grinned and gestured at the imposter, the obvious fallacy.

"Kanna of the Void, huh? So you don't feel anything? Weird," Byakuya said, musing over her.

She looked at Naraku, wondering if he had heard her all along, if this was to taunt her. He replaced the one he'd murdered, the one _the only one_ she cared for, with the embodiment of the dreams she'd never have. Maybe it was a coincidence, but if he could hear her then and remember, then he could hear her now in her quiet disdain with his actions.

Without fuss, she walked away from them both, and Naraku did not try to stop her. She had already done her part.

.

x

.

The mirror demon thundered after her, quaking the earth with each footstep. That face appeared in her mind again, and she muttered her name under her breath, at a loss for any other word to define her resolve. Kanna had to make a final stand; she and Naraku both knew it. He sent her off to die and she marched to his orders, hearing the malevolent cackle reverberating in the glass skin she had hardened into.

At the top of the cliff overlooking the valley and cave where her targets hid, she gestured her mirror into action against their holy barrier.

"Kanna! Is it going smoothly?" She felt Byakuya land behind her, but she left him without acknowledgement. He would not be Kagura, no matter what she said, so she shut him out, moving her demon like a puppet to do her bidding.

Inuyasha gave her a fight, standing back up no matter what she threw his way. Because of that, Kanna could feel victory swell below the emptiness of her resolve that filled her hollow chest. The feeling heightened when Kagome fired an arrow at the mirror, lodging it in the neck. Simultaneously, the arrow vanished and a crack formed in her own neck, dislodging a shard of her spite in the process. With every wound she and her mirror endured, Kanna stepped closer to her goal.

Kanna's thoughts were derailed when Kagome shouted up to her, "Kanna! Stop it! You'll die if this keeps up!"

Of course she would die – Kanna wished for it and accepted it. The concern for her well-being shook her. She remembered that these people had agreed to help Kagura, that they had pity, or affection, or whatever-it-was-called for her friend. They had been hunting Naraku far longer than she'd despised him for much of the same reasons.

She conjured her mirror into attacking Inuyasha nonetheless, following the orders she'd been given. Her mind whirred in its cracked shell, working through the situation.

Byakuya laughed after Inuyasha fell to the ground for the third time, chiding them for showing any concern for her, and then told her, "Don't be mad."

Mad? How could she be angry with something that didn't exist? Again, she ignored him, pressing forward in her battle with Inuyasha. She shut the world out: their pleading screams, Byakuya's taunts, how her body cracked and fell to pieces at every swing of the Tetsusaiga.

"This is your purpose…" Naraku muttered in her ear, chuckling under his breath, fondling her crystal heart in his slick hands. "They are fools to pity her. She cannot feel pain, or fear, or sorrow, and she does not understand."

And yet, she put herself in harm's way. She forced Inuyasha to destroy her, something Naraku would be unable to comprehend. Her arm fell to the ground, and she knew she could not stall anymore. The Tetsusaiga recovered the energy she had stolen from it to prolong the fight, and while the group recovered, she approached them.

She stood before them, offering herself to be killed. She had done enough, and she was broken and tired and _wanted_ to fall to pieces. They confused her; Inuyasha sheathed his sword, and they talked as though she could walk away from this, as if she would want to.

"Over?" she asked hopefully.

"No, it's not over," Naraku answered. He didn't understand. Did he ever? "After all the suffering they inflicted, they will allow you to escape? That attitude makes me sick. This is your final task, Kanna. Kill Inuyasha and the others, including yourself."

In the moment, cracked and incomplete, Kanna's body poised to follow the order, independent of her absent mind.

Kagome stepped forward, speaking gently. "Kanna, what's wrong? You're free now."

 _Free…_ The image burned back into her eyes, fiery and red, of the woman who had taught her that freedom had a definition, and every fracture in her glass skin screamed in agony. "Kagura…" She reminded herself, the word forming through the uncertainty, through the pain so intense she could not feel it, and she remembered what she had come to accomplish.

"Go to them, and I will keep up your end." The intact portions of her skin crumbled as he shattered her heart in the hand that had fashioned it.

Kagome yelled frantically, keeping Kanna's consciousness from slipping. "Kanna! What's wrong? What's happening?"  
In that moment, Kanna understood: it had been Kagome all along. Naraku had underestimated the expanse of Kanna's existence, of what could persevere even in a vacuum, always concentrating on Kagura, on someone else bigger and bolder than she could have ever been. He had done the same to Kagome – always, he focused on Kikyou and his love for her, or Inuyasha and his determination for vengeance. He could not see past the boundaries of himself, and Kanna realized that she and Kagome alone stood in his blind spot.

She opened her mouth, for the second and last time speaking with meaning in the hope that someone could hear her. But when she moved her lips, an echoing silence fell past them.

Kagome understood too, that the two of them alone would protect the secret. She shouted for Kanna and reached for her, Kanna reaching too but with what limbs – she had no hands or even solid legs to stand on and it was too late, her body had already given up and for a split second immense pressure crushed her from the inside and from the outside before –

Release took her, and she nestled against a warmth with a steady beat: the soul she could never consume, the one too big for her to steal, the one that had always been overlooked.

"The light," she whispered. "The light will kill Naraku." She thought of the jewel, pressing the image up against the soul. "The light will kill Naraku," she repeated. "The light inside the consumer of last words and desires. The light inside of you."


End file.
